Operation Dror Laben: How Israel’s 11-Year Search for Hadar Goldin Finally Forced Hamas to Give In

For eleven years, the location of Lt. Hadar Goldin’s remains was one of Hamas’s most closely guarded secrets. Goldin, killed and abducted during the 2014 Gaza war, was held underground in Rafah, and only a handful of Hamas commanders knew where. According to reports on Galei Tzahal, fewer than ten senior members of Hamas’s military wing were aware of the site. As the war in Gaza intensified, and Israel eliminated much of Hamas’s senior leadership, that circle narrowed to just five people.

Those few insiders included Rafah Brigade commander Mohammed Shabana, Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, and military chief Mohammed Deif, all later killed in Israeli strikes. But throughout the fighting, Israel deliberately avoided targeting several of these individuals when intelligence indicated they held information on Goldin’s whereabouts. They were classified as “intelligence assets,” and IDF operational orders explicitly forbade striking them. Twice, Israeli forces had clear opportunities to eliminate Shabana, yet the strikes were called off to preserve the chain of intelligence. Only later, when those assets were no longer nearby, was Shabana killed inside a Khan Younis tunnel together with Mohammed Sinwar.

This extraordinary restraint was part of a wider, multi-year intelligence and operational campaign known by the code name Dror Laben — Freedom for the Son. The operation began secretly in 2024 umder Brig.-Gen. Itzik Cohen, who had personally commanded Goldin in combat. Cohen’s forces worked for months in Rafah’s dense terrain, only meters from the tunnel where Goldin was ultimately found. Units from the Engineering Corps and elite combat divisions drilled and searched under fire, mapping the Hamas tunnel network while Shin Bet and Military Intelligence pursued human sources who might know the truth.

According to Channel 12, a “golden piece of intelligence” eventually broke Hamas’s secret when Israeli security services located an individual who knew the exact burial site. Once Hamas realized Israel had discovered the location, it understood it could no longer conceal the secret. Facing American diplomatic pressure and growing isolation, Hamas agreed to hand over Goldin’s remains.

A senior IDF official told Galei Tzahal that the military had come within meters of the site during Dror Laben and believed that “had the operation continued just a few more months, we might have reached him ourselves.” The handover ended one of Israel’s longest and most painful searches for a fallen soldier in its history of wars.